Russians Citizens´ Mood Today: “The Government Cares – but Inevitably Deceives us. We are Poor and Have No Say”

Abstract: We hear a lot of “the Russians” who are still portrayed as the big bug of evil in the media – because in Hegelian dialectics an evil antithesis is always needed for one´s own just thesis.

As I have written before, Putin surrounds himself with rich Jewish oligarchs, who exploit the people – and Putin even has the Russian state treasury at disposal.
How does this influence the lives of the Russians? How is the mood among the Russians – because if hungry Russians find a charismatic leader, it could be dangerous for Putin.

Putin still has a more than 80% approval rate – but the people are very displeased with his government. Putin makes the people proud of Russia – but in the long run this does not dampen the growling of the stomachs: 40% of the Russians are so poor that they only have money for food – or even not that (soup kitchens). Even the “middle class” have very low savings. Most people can only plan their lives in the short term – or not at all.

The Russians feel that the ruling authorities alone control events and that their own actions have no effect. At the same time, most Russians are optimistic.

The Russian people have two contradictory convictions, namely that the state “takes care of the people” and that “the state inevitably deceives you”.
Currently, the authorities do not have a coherent or positive view of the future of the country.
There is a decline in living standards and reductions of social services and in employment opportunities.

“The Russians are not satisfied with the situation and do not admire their government – even if Putin himself is popular – but the thing is, they see no alternative”.

The Russian recovery from the current recession continues to slow down according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The reason: demand has fallen.
Retail sales declined by 14% in December, with food sales even declining more than non-food products.
The purchasing power of the average per capita income in Russia fell by 10 per cent from 2013 to 2016.

The people have 2 lighthouses, which are still directional: Putin and the Jewish Russian Orthodox Church. However, they will only remain directional if hunger does not become too great.
The United States and NATO are working through sanctions, reducing oil prices (Russia’s most important export item), and through Rothschild’s Fed control over the Russian Central Bank, towards this is happening for an revolution to arise.

Trump is subordinated to a Jewish mafia under Rothschild Goldman Sachs and the military industrial complex, and is, just like Putin, arming in Eastern Europe – probably soon in Syria, too, for war against Russia. Putin holds regular huge evacuation exercises to divert the people.

On 19 Dec. 2016, the Russian ambassador to Turkey was shot. Franz Klintsevich, a top ally of Putin, said the secret service of a NATO country was behind the assassination (The Daily Mail 19 Dwc. 2016)

https://youtu.be/7C7BM3h9N_4

I have recently written about secret former police boss Putin, his siloviki and oligarch friends and their corruption as well as the many murders around Putin: The Business Insider 11. March 2018 mentions: Alexander Litvinenko, Anna Politkowskaja, Natalia Estemirowa, Stanislaw Markelow und Anastasia Baburova, Boris Nemzow, Boris Beresowski, Paul Klebnikow, Sergej Yushenkow were Putin critics and were murdered.

Our media tells us a lot about “the Russians” and their threat to the West. But who are these terrible enemies? Are they just robots, are they savage barbarians waiting to attack us, are they brainwashed to hate us? Or are they merely normal people, who are characterized by a cruel history – Nazi attack, the Soviet dictatorship. Do they have feelings, empathy?

We know so little about them – i.a. because of their incomprehensible Slavic language.
I have already tried to write about the character of the Russians –knowing that such a generalization is dangerous. For, of course, the Russians are also individuals, as we know from their famous authors.

Moscow 23 Jan. 2017:Putin and his cronies will never give liberals the right to change a country that they feel belongs to them alone.

Moscow Times 24 Jan. 2017:Russian citizens are not big on making long-term plans. According to a recent Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) survey, 48% of Russians make plans for up to a year, 20 percent plan for 3-5 years, 2 percent plan for 20 years, and 25% make no plans at all.Levada Center surveys report similar findings.Only 5% of Russians make plans for several years or more in advance, while 33% plan for 1-2 years at a time. Some 46% “do not know what will happen within the next months.”

Corporate directors and managers – people with the highest income and social status – make the long-term plans. The poorest, the oldest, the least educated – the socially disadvantaged – tend to live day by day. Adolescents who have their whole life in front of them plan only for the next two years.

The reason for this behavior, says Denis Volkov from the Levada Center, is that the Russians feel that the ruling authorities alone control the events and that their own actions have no effect.
At the same time, however, most Russians look optimistically into the future. According to FOM, 59% believe that life in Russia will be better in 20 years – whether they are satisfied with the state of affairs or not. Only 7% expect the situation to deteriorate.

Of course, this separation between the general confidence in a bright but distant future and the practical impossibility of predicting what comes tomorrow could be derived from the religious views of Russia or, more precisely, from its quasi-religious paternalistic way of thinking.

Even Russians who do not believe in God believe that the authorities – as the only ones who influence political and economic life – will solve their problems.However, it remains unclear how closely the authorities are doing this and whether they would do so in the near future. The Levada Centre leader, Lev Gudkov, writes that the Russian people also have two contradictory convictions, that the state “takes care of the people” and that “the state inevitably deceives people.”

At the moment, the authorities have no coherent or positive view of the future of the country the citizens can collect. At best, they hope to maintain the status quo.

For this reason normal Russians do not make any concrete plans. Nevertheless, people continue to believe in progress.

Business Insider 27 Dec. 2016: Most economists believe Russia’s beleaguered economy will return to at least anaemic growth in 2017. Mr. Putin enjoys public approval ratings of higher than 80 percent, and voters handed his party a massive victory in last September’s parliamentary elections.

But there is nothing to be optimistic about says Yuly Nisnevich, a political scientist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “I don’t see any positive changes, only words.”

Even if Russia returns to economic growth next year, and oil prices – Russia’s main source of foreign exchange – rebound a bit, there seems no hope of renewing the rapid growth of the past decade. That boom lifted millions of Russians out of poverty and established Putin’s popularity.A repeat would require the kind of sweeping reforms Putin has talked about but so far failed to initiate.

Economic reforms would be painful, at least in the short term, and would hit most Russians at a time when they are already suffering a fall in living standards, cutbacks in social services, and narrowing of employment opportunities. Despite a few outbursts of protest, Russian society has been surprisingly inert over the past three difficult years. But the big question is: how long will that continue.

“Russians aren’t pleased with the situation, and don’t admire their government – even if Putin himself is popular – but, the thing is, they see no alternative,” says Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the independent Centre for Political Technologies in Moscow. “Hard to say when this will change.

Trump or no Trump, the geopolitical tensions and information warfare will not suddenly disappear. Our best hope is that the worst can be avoided, and we will make it through another year.”

Moscow Times 6 Febr. 2017: Russia’s recovery from the current recession continues to slow, according to the Economic Development Ministry. The reason: demand has plummeted.If that is the case, it means the Russian economy’s decline is in full swing despite official statements that the recession has ended.
The entire last quarter as a whole, has been tough for retailersRetail turnover dropped by 14 percent over that period, with food sales falling even more than non-food goods.The Russian middle class has nearly exhausted its savings, says Lilia Ovcharova, director of the Higher School of Economics Institute for Social Policy. Previously, 60 percent of the population either chose not to make any purchases or opted for less expensive alternatives. Now that figure stands at 75 percent. The number of those expecting the economic crisis to continue for some time has ballooned.More than half of Russians had no savings before the current crisis, much less now.On an average, Russians devoted only 10 percent of their income to savings from January to November of 2016, down 25 percent from the same period in 2015.

According to the HSE, among those who have savings, 70 percent can live on them for one month without changing their lifestyles, and 33 percent only one week.Real incomes have been falling for the past three years, but that decline accelerated in 2016 when the government stopped indexing pensions and social benefits to inflation. The buying power of the average per capita income in Russia fell 10% from 2013 to 2016.
According to the HSE, 40 percent of Russians in 2016 considered themselves poor – meaning that they lacked money for food or had only enough for food.

Comment
These people occur to me to be similar to other Europeans – but they have been bullied and subdued into poverty and ignorance – in later years by USA/NATO sanctions.They need lighthouses – Vladimir Putin – and the judaized Orthodox Church.
However, if Putin cannot help their general standard of living he will have trouble some time in the future – although the un-manipulated Russians are apparently pretty peaceful – but terrible when brainwashed, as experienced by fellow Russians in 1917 and the Germans in the end phase of WW2.

The Telegraph 23 Febr. 2008: Left Putin and Patriarch Alexei II.Although he has never confirmed it, the patriarch, like the president, is a former KGB agent (like Present Patriarch Kirill, codenamed Drozdov, according to Soviet archives opened to experts in the 1990s. Many in the Orthodox hierarchy are also accused of working as KGB informers – sending many real Christians into death.”Essentially, the Orthodox Church is one of the only Soviet institutions that has never been reformed,”

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